PAYDAY: The Heist is great for groups of four people looking for a challenge and the buy in price is just right for what you get, basically splitting $60 four ways. The game has great music (so good it has six pages on the steam forum asking for it to be released for purchase and we agree), good sound, decent graphics but the clear draw here is the white knuckled experience from the brutally fast and tense action that really shines. If you don’t have a group of three friends the game can go from great to ok to horrible pretty fast, the A.I. difficulty ramp is crazy hard until you slowly level your character and the lack of a mute or push to talk button can ruin even the best 3 man plans when the fourth guy disrupts everything. The missions will get repetitive if you are the type to try and level straight to lvl145 but taken in small group sessions they hold up fine and remain a blast. It’s almost the perfect carrot on a stick game to keep you coming back again and again. Those itching for more content should know that Overkill has already said they are taking suggestions for more heist levels so be on the lookout for DLC.
As I said the game needs 4 players, the computer buddy A.I. is ok and pretty responsive to helping you up should you call during a robbery but overall you will do the majority of the work. The computer enemy A.I. can be anywhere from brutally accurate to a simpleton so it seems to even out. Sometimes whole squads will be looking the other way needing a second to actually react turn and fire. Other times you will swear every enemy A.I. has your number no matter where you go or hide. Like left 4 dead you will get swarms of enemies and these swarms can overwhelm you quickly if you don’t bring your “A” game. There’s different enemy types in the game to keep it interesting from regular and varying degrees of body armor to special types like cloaker’s who see through smoke bombs and have a nasty cattle prod, shield units that are impenetrable from the front, bulldozers who wear the maximum armor and taser units who can stop you cold at short to medium range with a nasty jolt.
The levels are broken up into different heist that all have bits and pieces inspired from movies like Heat, Clear and Present Danger, Batman: The Dark Knight, etc The first level and favorite would be First World Bank since it is obviously a bank heist. The level after that is Heat Street where you chase down a getaway vehicle through a city street, then Panic Room where you cut out a safe from the floor of a building and protect a chopper as it tries to lift the safe out and then the Green Bridge level, which seems to be the hardest on any difficulty, has you cut a convict out of a transport vehicle, escort them to a construction site to have the convict escape and then make a getaway yourselves at a separate location. The last two levels unfortunately require you to play them on Hard or Overkill difficulty, Diamond Heist which is the only mission which lets you go silent for the first half inside of a high rise and finally the Slaughter House level that has some very tough and intense close quarter combat inside a meat packing plant.
All the levels have objectives that are simple a, b than c but key items you need are randomized to allow re-playability and some uncertainty each play through. You’re provided all your info from a guy named Bain who you never see but does keep you informed on your status and the status of the police coming to get you. Your objectives will sometimes require you to babysit different objects like drills and hacking devices that can jam. This provides a good advantage to the enemies, ramps up the tension and requires you to need your team to cover whoever is the babysitter. However we would have liked to see the possibility of having no jams at all as well just to make it fair. Since this game is all about money, it’s the XP in the game, there’s also stacks of cash randomly throughout so you’ll want to grab those when you see them. Overkill also added a “camera” system to levels where shooting out the camera “blinds” the enemy in that area. This can help your team since during a rush of enemies they may end up rushing the wrong part of a building giving you time to setup an ambush and we feel this is a nice touch.
The XP system is a straight forward however Overkill does not explain it’s use at all since there is zero tutorials. The XP system boils down to 3 skill trees that you can do in any order, you select which unlock you want next with TAB and when you level up you get that unlock. There’s no points per skill or per character it’s just obtain the next skill you chose. The next thing we didn’t like was the speed at which unlocks come, once you get a few levels in they start coming very slowly instead of faster at the start and slower as you get better leading to more of a grinding feeling more than anything. The graphics are decent and with the amount of enemies and smoke on screen I’m sure that came at the cost of detail we’re missing in the enviroment. There’s no push to talk button and for a team based game it can ruin a match really quick if you aren’t playing with friends. It didn’t get added in the first patch so hopefully it will be added soon as you’re only options are always on or always off and it can really mess up an otherwise good round.
The last thing that’s disappointing is the hostages, you can shout at them, they lie down and then you can restrain them if you have zip ties. If you don’t restrain them they will run everywhere most likely in your line of fire and if you shoot them you add time to the already long amount of time you sit out a round should you go down in the middle of it. However if you have a hostage zip tied your friends can release the one hostage chosen by the police and you’ll get your downed buddy back earlier. There’s no human shields, no hoarding hostages in a room and no threatening lives to make the police back away or at least pull back some. And the police will grab hostages and remove them all if you are not careful so you can find yourself a man or two down and nothing to do but try and hold out until they respawn.
We had a fun time with PAYDAY: The Heist and for the price it’s hard to ask for more. If you and a few friends love heist movies and lets be honest most groups of friends have always fantasized about pulling off a heist, get everyone on board and take the plunge. It’s not the flashiest game but it doesn’t look horrible either, the music is pitch perfect and the experience is intense which is just like it should be. We would recommend you make sure everyone has a mic as there are situations where going off in pairs works wonders and communication is key in this game. The level grind might be where some people get burnt out so if you or your friends hate the grind just take PAYDAY: The Heist in small doses and have fun with it, try switching between the different levels and don’t be discouraged when you lose, man up, rearm, re-plan and try it again, it makes the victory that much sweeter! If you’re still undecided you can try a demo on PlayStation 3 but unfortunately there is no demo yet for PC on Steam.
We played PAYDAY: The Heist on a PC with these specs:
Intel Core i7-2600k
GIGABYTE GA-Z68P-DS3 Motherboard
8GB (2x4GB) of DDR3 1600 Corsair Vengeance RAM
Windows 7 Home Premium
ATI XFX 6850 2GB Factory Overclocked Video Card
Wolfking Warrior Controller
Logitech G400 Mouse
M-Audio AV40 Speakers
ViewSonic 28″ LCD Monitor
